Prophet

CASE STUDY

AXA

Meet Emma, the future of humanized insurance experience

Challenge

AXA is one of the world’s leading insurance companies offering diverse financial services globally. To successfully grow its business in Asia, the client recognized the need to create a more consistent and human brand throughout the region.

On the back of a new global vision – from Payer to Partner – AXA partnered with Prophet to develop an Asia-specific solution that would deliver on their ambition to:

  1. create a more consistent customer journey and brand experience across the region
  2. develop a new customer engagement proposition that also humanize the experience through a new digital platform
  3. develop digital touchpoints to drive greater engagement with existing and potential customers.

Solutions

Through deep consumer research and segmentation, Prophet partnered with AXA to create a regional well-being strategy, develop a new customer experience, and run UX & UI sprints to design a new digital product.

We began by conducting a multi-country regional segmentation, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative research across five key markets in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand and Japan). Over 4,000 customers were surveyed to better understand what they wanted from an insurance company when it came to their health, well-being and mental health. This research created the foundation for the development of a value proposition that defined the future of digital customer experience (DCX) at AXA.

To bring the strategy to life, we set out to reimagine the customer experience, taking a fresh look at how to create a new insurance platform that combined insurance e-servicing, 3rd party health and wellness digital services and a new conversational chatbot and virtual concierge. Importantly, at the core of this new experience was an empathetic and human approach on well-being topics for customers, elevating the AXA brand on an experience level never attempted at the organization.

From this strategic foundation, Emma was born — AXA’s first humanized user interface, which became the core of the brand’s new digital customer experience. This seamless experience – from claims to servicing, health content, symptom checker, and more – was embodied in a single Emma ecosystem for current AXA customers as well as prospects.

With Payer to Partner at the core of its proposition, Emma’s persona was designed to be an Empathetic Navigator, helping individuals find the solutions and content most relevant to their well-being needs. Prophet further “personified” Emma, crafting a real-life avatar, her tone of voice, and the visual expression across a full identity system.

A key highlight of the process was a two-day Hackathon to create “Emma”. Over 70 global leaders and stakeholders across diverse disciplines gathered together to “hack” the Emma experience. It was the first time in AXA’s history and probably the largest cross geographic collaboration of its kind.

Results

Emma was piloted then launched in Hong Kong in Q4 of 2019.

Emma is bridging the gap between digital engagement and financial advisor partners. As of 1H of 2020, Emma’s launch in Hong Kong drew more than 2 million logins, exceeding expectations. Emma is now being rolled out across the rest of Asia.

The digital brand experience we created for AXA won the gold award for “Best Use of Digital in the Financial Services Sector” at the 2021 Digital Impact Awards Asia, as well as two awards at the 2020 Transform Awards Asia, including a gold award for “Best Brand Experience” and a silver award for “Best Visual Identity” from the financial services sector.

CASE STUDY

Ava

Elevating a FemTech start-up to become a bold brand

Challenge

Ava, a fast-growing FemTech start-up, is known for helping users accurately plan conception. The brand is expanding its services and is preparing to launch a contraception product. With so much momentum, and changes happening in their leadership team, the time was right to partner with Prophet to revamp the brand.

Solutions

The key was identifying their target customers and what the brand should stand for in a way that was sensitive, non-judgemental and empowering. Prophet conducted online focus groups in multiple markets to identify Ava’s target customers and better understand their needs. We then determined what space the brand should play in analysing conception and contraception competitors. Our research uncovered that Ava should be in the scientific, research-backed space (vs. lifestyle brands), highlighting its purpose to improve women’s health (vs. brands like Apple).

Our research also provided insights for Ava’s brand architecture, showing that we had permission to establish the Ava brand as one that went across conception and contraception – speaking to different product-level needs with tailored messaging.

Based on these insights we defined a bold new brand promise, ”Driving the progress women deserve. One cycle at a time.” It was brought to life with a new, more passionate tone of voice, messaging and visuals that demonstrate how the new brand shows up in a more inspiring way.

Results

Six months later, Ava has effectively rolled out the new tone of voice and messaging on key channels. Marketing budgets are better aligned to successfully reach the target audience.

“It was key for us that our partner would fully ‘get us’ and stand 100% behind our mission. We found that with Prophet and are super happy with the results.”

Lea Von Bidder
CEO and Co-founder of Ava

CASE STUDY

Medtronic

Re-organizing a marketing team to meet key business needs

Challenge

Medtronic, a global medical technology company, has been rapidly expanding through organic and acquisitional growth. As customer segments expanded, stakeholder expectations evolved and new business and product teams emerged. The company’s corporate marketing team recognized the need to rethink how omnichannel campaigns and content would support enterprise growth.

Solutions

Prophet worked with leaders across the global brand, marketing and communications teams to collaboratively define a new vision for corporate marketing. The new concept was designed to clarify priorities, set objectives and identify the necessary moves to both evolve and execute. We employed a mix of industry best practices and Prophet proprietary tools and frameworks to give Medtronic a custom-built solution.

A key component of the new vision was a framework articulating the role corporate marketing plays for the company as a whole, as well as its different businesses and regions. Prophet used its marketing archetypes to align on the right model for Medtronic.

From there, we outlined business and technology implications, key strategic moves and a transformation roadmap to support the new vision, so the Medtronic team could execute the strategy independently over time.

Results

As Medtronic continues on its mission to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life for patients around the world, the company’s corporate marketing team is now executing on a vision that is tightly connected with the enterprise business strategy. The team is well-positioned as the global driver of the Medtronic story.

“Modern marketing teams continue to evolve and stretch to meet stakeholder needs. Repeatable frameworks are helpful, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach that fits every organization. Prophet helped us think through a number of approaches and worked with us to create a vision and roadmap that meets our unique business needs.” -Greg McCullough, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing for Medtronic.

“Prophet helped us think through a number of approaches and worked with us to create a vision and roadmap that meets our unique business needs.”

Greg McCullough
Senior Director of Corporate Marketing for Medtronic

CASE STUDY

MMRF

Developing a direct-to-patient engagement model

Challenge

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) is the largest non-profit in the world dedicated to finding a cure for multiple myeloma, cancer of the blood. To advance its mission, MMRF needed to collect more patient data to identify the right treatment options for each patient. This meant the business would need to build a new, direct-to-patient model, requiring a deeper understanding of their patients to create the right value in exchange for data.

Solution

We partnered with MMRF to launch the MMRF “CureCloud” – an at-home testing kit and digital dashboard displaying personalized treatment options for myeloma patients. We also developed an end-to-end patient experience strategy based on primary research, to identify the right moments to introduce the program, and build a relationship with them over time as patients undergo their journey from diagnosis to remission.

Customer research uncovered that the most important benefits to patients in a partner like MMRF is personalized communication and recommendations in exchange for their data, followed by the prospect of helping the entire multiple myeloma community drive toward a cure. These insights helped us build an engaging CureCloud experience and MVP and product roadmap for the future. As part of this, we refreshed the MMRF website, a primary entry point for patients to learn about their disease and become aware of the MMRF brand before becoming a CureCloud participant.

Going hand-in-hand with a patient-centric experience, the MMRF also needed a brand refresh. We developed a modern look-and-feel, bolder tone of voice and creative marketing platform – ‘Expect More’ – to signal to the market that MMRF has once again elevated expectations of the myeloma community, bringing the innovation necessary to find a cure.

Results

The MMRF CureCloud MVP launched July 14. The revamped website is live and has generated 29,789 unique users in the first month, a 22% improvement in bounce rate and a 6%  increase in SERP. It also won Web Marketing Association’s 2021 WebAward for outstanding achievement in web development. Through our partnership, MMRF has learned how to work in agile to create value through a direct-to-patient, experience-led model.

CASE STUDY

Emart

Driving retail growth through customer data strategy

Challenge

Over the past decade, Emart, the leading general merchandise retailer in South Korea, has been on an aggressive format expansion drive to address competitive and regulatory pressures on its core hypermarket business. As they have expanded into new formats and increased their licensed businesses, they have assembled a diverse portfolio of affiliate companies that fit into consumers’ lives in many ways.

With an over 90 percent penetration rate among South Korean shoppers, Emart was looking to improve current customer relationships and spend across all its affiliate businesses to fuel its next wave of growth. Emart needed to gain a deeper understanding of its customers’ needs and preferences, strengthening its ability to deploy a micro-targeted marketing approach. Emart engaged Prophet to define a comprehensive customer data strategy, as well as the roadmap for transforming their businesses to be more data-driven.

Solutions

Prophet defined a customer data strategy with a detailed roadmap of initiatives to help Emart drive impact across the business.

The Prophet team helped Emart uncover revelatory data that helped define new experiences along the customer journey. Then, Prophet identified the capabilities and organization structure needed to manage, analyze and act on these new data insights. Based on our detailed mapping of Emart’s current state and our knowledge of best practices in leading global organizations, we were able to design a future state model for Emart, as well as the roadmap to build the required capabilities and organizational model.

To demonstrate the value of data and justify future investments, we took a large sample of Emart’s existing transactional and CRM data to identify clear behavioral profiles that could be targeted in pilot marketing experiments. We were able to prove that targeted marketing could have an impact on two levels – increasing spending on the targeted category (e.g. increasing spending on health & beauty), as well as increasing total basket size (e.g. how much they spent on their weekly shop overall).

Results

For a duration of 6 months, Prophet supported the Emart team in conducting a series of test and learn marketing experimentations based on customer data insights with continuous proven success in driving business impact. Since then, Emart has established a dedicated team to run targeted marketing at scale as the full organization at Emart is committed to investing in becoming a data-driven company.

Impact

20%

Increase in sales by non-category

15%

increase in sales by targeting in declining categories

10%

increase in sales in key categories

CASE STUDY

M Passport

Designing the first signature family program for Marriott Hotels

Challenge

To capture a greater share of the growing leisure market in APAC, Marriott Hotels needed to shift its reputation from being viewed as reliable business travel accommodations, to desirable family-friendly destinations.

Through research, Prophet found that parents highly value the options for daily activities on their vacation. Even though Marriott Hotels across Asia were offering great activities for kids, the Marriott International brand wasn’t getting credit due to guests not attributing the programming back to the master brand. So, to win with families, Prophet needed to help Marriott Hotels boost its family hotel activities offerings and develop a clearer connection between kids activities and the Marriott International brand.

Solutions

We created M Passport, a program designed to engage and support children as they grow up while giving parents peace of mind that their children are having fun and learning along the way. M Passport is a kids-focused program that provides children with three key benefits – Brilliant Body, Brilliant Mind and Brilliant Heart aligning with the Marriott Hotel brand positioning of “Inspiring Brilliance”.

M Passport comes to life in a gift children receive upon arrival, a “passport” booklet where they collect stamps for completing activities that stimulate Mind, Body and Heart. Activities are categorized under each of the three key benefits, which have a corresponding stamp design. Stamps can then be redeemed for rewards, such as ice cream, cookies or a local souvenir. In addition to the booklet, children receive postcards to draw on and fill out stickers, and buttons to serve as souvenirs of their Marriott stay. The program is available to guests in both resort and urban properties, where the kids’ activities are customized accordingly. In resorts, many activities are done on-site, while urban properties offer a map of the city to allow exploration on property and immersion in the city around the hotel.

We designed a unique visual identity system for M Passport based on its key benefits and Marriott International’s brand positioning ‘Inspiring Brilliance’. The M Passport word mark, combined with the brand font, creates a ‘light bulb moment.’ While staying consistent with the Marriott International master brand, Prophet’s design teams added playful and fun elements through simple line illustrations that showcase local animals, icons and sceneries. The illustration style is based on the simplistic lines of the M Passport logo.

Building on the feedback and learnings from the proof-of-concept program at resorts, the visual identity system has recently been expanded to showcase a broader array of designs for urban properties, including imagery of Owen the Owl, the M Passport program mascot, on location at various historic APAC sites – from Sydney to China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and more.

Results

APAC became the first region to fully roll out this global program, beginning with a proof-of-concept in 2018, and now expanding to over 20 properties across APAC. The program has distributed over 15,000 copies of M Passport to Marriott’s little guests, generating 6,210+ M Passport package room night bookings, and driving more than 137.4 million total impressions and over 18.7 million reach. M Passport plans to roll out further across additional urban properties in 2021.

Impact

15k

Copies of M Passport delivered

6k

M Passport package room night bookings

CASE STUDY

MB Bank

Creating and launching a new brand to tell MB’s transformation story

Challenge

In 2018, MB Bank (Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank), one of the largest financial groups in Vietnam, initiated a multi-year transformation program in partnership with Prophet, to become a digital-first, customer-centric bank with an ambitious goal of aggressively growing its customer base.

After in-depth customer research, MB learned that it was seen as dated and uninspiring. The bank needed a more modern and fresh brand to attract new customers.

The bank’s hallmark 25th anniversary in November of 2019 presented the perfect opportunity to launch the new brand, reflecting the bank’s transformation to become more modern, digital and customer-centric.

Solutions

In line with their ambition, we developed a new brand platform that captured the essence of MB’s transformation to be a modern bank that enriches the future of people and businesses. The new brand is anchored in the promise that customers will get access to banking that is innovative, trustworthy and as convenient as possible. We also created a tagline to sum up the essence of the new brand: Intelligent Banking. Enriching Your Future.

In parallel, Prophet also created a new logo and designed a comprehensive visual system with key assets to bring the new brand to life.

We then worked with MB and local partners to plan and launch the new brand in the market. We designed a suite of internal assets to educate and generate excitement among employees, including an internal website, posters, videos and photobooths. We also supervised the creation of an external advertising campaign, including a brand video and OOH assets to be displayed throughout Vietnam through strategic media planning.

Results

Following an internal rollout to inspire and educate employees, the MB Bank rebrand was then officially launched to the public on the day of MB’s 25th anniversary, marking the next chapter of their growth on their journey towards transformation.

MB Bank was awarded ‘Most Improved Bank of the Year’ for its refreshed brand platform along with two other awards at The Asian Banker Vietnam Awards 2020.

Our work with MB Bank was awarded gold at the 2020 Transform Awards Asia for “Best Brand Development Project to Reflect a Change of Mission/Values/Positioning”.

“We are delighted to have a trusted strategic partner in Prophet and they have played a crucial role in our very important transformation journey as we evolve towards becoming a digital-first bank.”

Mr. Thai
CEO, MB Bank

Impact

48.8%

increase in revenue in 2021

23.4%

increase in ROE in 2021

8.3m

newly acquired customers in 2021 and 2022

CASE STUDY

MeUndies

Applying consumer insights to fuel the next wave of growth

Challenge

MeUndies, the subscription-based D2C underwear and loungewear company, grew from an idea to a powerhouse brand in the eight years since its launch, having sold over 12 million pairs of underwear to date. While the growing company had a passionate and loyal customer base, they were looking to strategically acquire new customers, while staying true to their brand values and mission of fueling authentic self-expression.

Solutions

Prophet worked with the cross-functional leadership team at MeUndies to develop a holistic profile of the consumer segments in MeUndies’ addressable market across the U.S.

Through this process, we uncovered key insights about which target segments presented the largest growth potential and the best fit to the brand’s unique DNA. Prophet also discovered important findings on how to avoid alienating the existing loyal customer base.

Once the segments and targeting strategy were identified, Prophet worked alongside MeUndies to kick off a cross-functional committee to implement the insights across the brand & marketing strategy, growth/channel strategy, retention, UX/UI, product and analytics teams. Across the organization, the target persona became a focal point in all strategic, technical and metrics-driven conversations. Simultaneously, a segment-typing algorithm was applied to tag both new and existing customers with their segment designation, which then systematically enabled targeted product testing, messaging and digital touchpoint executions.

Results

Based on the insights from the customer journey maps and segmentation, MeUndies finessed their product, marketing, and experience strategies to more effectively drive growth with target customers, resulting in a shift of the media buy budget. After implementing Prophet’s work, MeUndies’ new customer acquisition accelerated in double digits year over year.

CASE STUDY

Marriott

Creating a unique story and identity for Man Ho

Challenge

Marriott was looking to drive the reputation and revenue of Man Ho, its signature Cantonese restaurant in JW Marriott and Marriott hotels throughout Mainland China and Hong Kong. The restaurant needed a signature look and feel to help differentiate itself from other popular hotel restaurants. Prophet was tasked with creating a unique brand story and a refreshed visual identity to articulate Man Ho’s unique proposition.

Solutions

Prophet started by conducting interviews with the head chef and other key stakeholders to identify unique traits that aligned with Man Ho’s aspirations. Through an iterative approach, we developed a new brand positioning and story for Man Ho that was inspired by the idea of taking diners on a culinary journey through time, with Cantonese dishes that have been cultivated and refined from one generation to another.

The positioning was brought to life through a refreshed logo and identity system which juxtaposes tradition with contemporary color combinations. The bird-and-key logo represents the ancient carrier bird that transported messages and ideas from one person to another to symbolize the journey that the recipes have been on.  This is a strong symbol, representing how Man Ho unlocks the secret behind the ingredients that elevate Cantonese cuisine.

Prophet also art-directed professional photoshoots with real-life chefs at Man Ho to curate a set of photography that tells the stories behind Man Ho’s food. Visual applications and brand guidelines were also developed to ensure consistent execution of the brand identity.

Results

The new Man Ho brand positioning and visual identity is in the process of being implemented in properties across Mainland China and Hong Kong.

Our work with Marriott’s Man Ho was awarded bronze at Transform Awards Asia-Pacific 2019.

CASE STUDY

Moneyfarm

Helping a robo-advisor expand to new markets

Challenge

Moneyfarm, one of Europe’s largest digital wealth management companies, had its sights set on entering the German market. When Allianz Global Investors bought a stake in the robo-advisor, the two companies set plans in motion to launch a new multi-asset product in the local market following demand from digitally-native savers and investors.

Prophet was enlisted to facilitate this expansion and to harvest the potential of Moneyfarm’s move into Germany and beyond.

Solutions

We set to work developing an intuitive way to communicate the benefits of this integrated partnership.

The goal was to establish an endorsed brand architecture solution that maximized positive equity transfer between the traditional financial services brand and the fintech start-up; leveraging Allianz’s solid reputation and high awareness in the German market and Moneyfarm’s strong tech and innovation credentials.

We then worked to craft and distil a value proposition and go-to-market strategy specifically tailored to the needs of German customers and the products available to them. Communicating the unique benefit of active returns at passive prices delivered by human expertise with robo-advisory efficiency and precision.

Results

Armed with a brand and strong value proposition that clearly communicates the strategic alliance, Moneyfarm is well on its way to achieving its growth plans. Just one month after its launch in Germany in June 2019, Moneyfarm saw a significant jump in client activation and investments of over one million.

Not only is Moneyfarm well on its way to achieving its growth plans in this new market, it’s also broadening the availability of digital wealth management in a cost-effective and accessible structure.

“Prophet helped us at this crucial moment in our company’s history as we looked to define and execute the right strategy to realize our growth ambitions.”

Giovanni Daprà
Co-founder and Chief Executive at Moneyfarm

CASE STUDY

PagerDuty

Positioning the brand for its next stage of growth

Challenge

Since its founding in 2009, PagerDuty had grown from an on-call management tool for developers to a company-wide platform for real-time operations indispensable to teams in DevOps, IT Ops, Security, and Business and Industrial Ops. The company’s user-centric product innovation, 300+ platform integrations and product leadership in on-call management and incident response had earned it a loyal community of core customers. But as it began to approach the capital markets to help fund its next stage of growth, PagerDuty needed to clarify its corporate positioning in order to establish relevance with enterprise buyers, new technology partners and the analyst community to help “future-proof” the brand as the company innovated in event intelligence, visibility and analytics.

Solutions

Prophet developed a range of hypotheses for PagerDuty’s corporate positioning by considering inputs ranging from traditional sources (competitive audits, product deep dives, category expertise) to sources unique to PagerDuty’s culture and ethos (customer celebrations at its annual Summit). The CEO and leadership team were incredibly engaged in the process because they truly believed that the positioning needed to be anchored not just in the value PagerDuty delivers to customers, but also in the shared interest that the company and its customers have to improving the everyday experiences and lives of people on its platform. Prophet worked with the PagerDuty team to craft a positioning recommendation anchored in both customer insight and company values, and to define a category – Digital Operations Management – that PagerDuty could own, shape and win as it achieved its growth over the coming years.

Results

The corporate positioning was activated in Q2 2019 as a key input to PagerDuty’s S-1 filings and analyst communications prior to its April 2019 IPO. The positioning and has acted as a clear, concise and compelling frame of reference in conversations with new Enterprise buyers and with new teams at existing customer accounts. It has helped favorably expand buyers’ perceptions and understanding of PagerDuty’s core, emerging and planned customer-centric innovations.

CASE STUDY

Poly

Creating the “We’re a go” digital campaign

Challenge

When the words “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” were uttered, they were heard by millions of Americans through Plantronics audio.  To celebrate its part in Apollo 11’s spaceflight on the 50th Anniversary of this momentous event, Poly asked Prophet to create a campaign that would connect their past to the present, and the Poly and Plantronics brands together.

Solution

Working as an integrated team, Prophet crafted three campaign concepts before selecting one to build into a multi-channel campaign. Executions included a microsite, paid and organic social media posts including video, display advertising and materials for a gala event and launch at the NYSE.

Results

The campaign far exceeded the goals established by Poly – with more than double the number of social engagements and over five times the number of views on the microsite. Together we built a powerful, engaging campaign that shared Poly’s unique story and relentless relevance 50 years later.

In Nov. 2019, the Prophet team won two North America Transform Awards for their work with Poly.

  • SILVER award for ‘Best corporate rebrand following a merger or acquisition’
  • BRONZE award for ‘Best visual identity from the technology, media and telecommunications sector’

Five Wins at the North America Transform Awards

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